Somewhere Only We Knew
by Clarra-Night
Summary: (RE-POST) Loki returns to a place only he and Thor knew, and childhood memories come rushing back. A kind of reversed version of my other story 'Remember', but with Loki.


**Author's Notes: Hm, I really need to get better at functioning properly on this site. **

**This is now another re-post of the chapters I'd written put back into its original single-chapter version, because the first re-post had some story structure errors I wanted to fix, and thanks to I'vebeenLOKI'Dyetagain (I mean that in the good way), I'm reassured that it isn't too long to be a one-shot ^.^**

******Of course, to everyone who had read, followed, favourited or reviewed my stories, thank you very, very, very much. To a few other people, very sorry for not getting to reply or PM a personal thank you.**

**There isn't a specific time context for this one. When they're older, Loki has returned to a secret place he and Thor discovered when they were much younger, and inseparable. Inspiration from the cover by Lily Allen of 'Somewhere Only We Know', the original by Keane.**

**I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think of it :)**

* * *

It was still there.

Untouched by all the tragedy and destruction of everything that had happened since the youngest prince fell, the little shaded corner on the castle parapet could have easily not existed at all, and none the wiser. A tiny, secret world within one of the grandest. Insignificant but innocent among all the chaos and vastness of Yggdrasil.

Loki approached it slowly, almost hesitantly. His silent footsteps matched the tentativeness of the newborn twilight settling on the realm around him. A slight breeze brushed his cheek softly, as if gently urging him on.

_You haven't been here in quite a while…_

_Only because I haven't been in the same world for quite a while. I would never have stopped coming, otherwise._

The twisted section of parapet still formed the same doorway from years ago, and he ducked underneath it to enter. The delicate light inside was in limbo between Asgard's famously bright sunsets and the softening cool dusk, and it filtered through the gaps in the rooftop overhead. The space behind the curved walling was slightly smaller than his old bedchambers. Two of the only solid things there were a pair of little wooden chairs, side by side. One for him, and one for Thor.

The only two solid things there – incorporeal memories were much more plentiful, and they seemed to audibly echo and visibly colour the secret room even as Loki stood there alone in the hushed evening, watching them closely after many missing years.

* * *

_They find it together, he and Thor, when exploring the Asgardian citadel rooftops._

_Thor is restless and sunny in his six-year-old youth, while Loki accompanies him with watchful, wide green eyes. Like the shaded coolness of Thor's brightly golden colours had been filtered out, but was determinedly staying close by._

_Loki is the one to notice it, as Thor looks out excitedly over the edge of the sunlit parapet at the enormity of the city's expanses._

_A segment of the roof is misshapen, probably from one of the many long ago invasions on Asgard, and it's arched so that a bedchamber-sized fragment of the rooftop corner is masked from the rest of it._

_Two smiles, a boyish lively grin followed by an impish, more childlike one, trail into the accidental room. It seems quite large, the two of them just unable to reach the ceiling of it when Thor decides to put his little brother on his shoulders to try._

_Two of the smaller chairs go missing from the palace a quarter of an hour afterwards, and now the two of them have somewhere each in the newly discovered dwelling to sit, besides the floor._

* * *

Loki's eyes settled on the two oak-brown chairs placed side-by-side, slightly crookedly, in the middle of the tiny hideaway. They looked old and worn, and were covered in dust by the many passing months he had been away. But he found that if he narrowed his eyes at them and tilted his head to the side, he could see them clearly – two tiny recollections from their childhood that he and his brother had stolen together, sat side by side on together, and played games like 'Kings and Castles' with together.

Not a moment passed before he stepped towards the simple, forgotten setup and carefully rearranged them so that they were back firmly close together.

* * *

_Loki's first thought is of the secret rooftop hideout, shielded by the twist of slating, found only a few days ago – a perfect sanctuary from the everyday demanding taunts and glares that alternate between smugness and suspicion._

_When he peers inside, the breeze is drifting around their two wooden chairs with the morning light, from through the gaps in the roofing above._

_"They're still here!"_

_Thor appears from around the gable corner, and Loki feels a glimmer of hopeful gladness as he watches his brother arrive. They share the smile of two who know a secret is between only them._

_"We must make a signpost to make sure no one else tries to invade this clandestine refuge, Brother!"_

_Later, a piece of paper hangs above the crooked doorway._

_Thor had chosen the message, but they agreed to write half each. The first part is scrawled boldly, then followed by a delicate hand, but both are discernably childlike._

**_THE SECRET REALM OF _**_THE SONS OF ODIN_

* * *

Loki took his gaze away from the pair of chairs to look at the space above the distorted entryway. The evening had settled shadows over the concealed haven like a soft blanket, but he could still see full well that the childish sign was no longer there.

Loki hurriedly threw off the sense that the empty space it had left behind felt like another bottomless abyss.

He quickly lowered his eyes to hang onto the slightly more hopeful picture of the two chairs below. Not for the first time, he felt like the surface of a still ocean with the distressed ache for their unscathed childhood trying to break everything apart underneath, as he wondered how long it had been gone for.

* * *

_The ink leaves dark splatters against the green fabric of his tunic, though the derision from the schoolroom Loki had just left, badly restrained behind their light laughter, stains further. But he knows without hesitation where he is going – the familiar misshapen doorway feels like a set of friendly open arms, waiting to comfort and smooth away the dirt from a long day._

_And the greatest comfort is that they always seem to arrive there at the same time._

_"Brother?"_

_Thor takes up his seat next to Loki. His little brother looks up with an even smile that veils anything beneath. Thor quickly wipes away smears of ink on his eight-year-old brother's pale cheeks, tousling Loki's black hair. Surprisingly, he does not begin any conversation, letting simple, companionable silence uphold in the mellow afternoon. Maybe there was nothing new to say._

_The two of them sit in their own tiny world shielded from the rest of it, and their signpost seems to protectively watch over them._

* * *

As tentatively as Thor had done it with affectionate big-brotherly roughness, Loki touched his slender fingers to the hollow beneath his cheekbone. Ink stains were the least of his worries, now.

* * *

_… Scuffle, swish… thud! Scrape… thump, thump, thump…_

_Loki hears the disordered steps of someone grappling in their rooftop hideout just as he reaches the entryway, and his heart gives a small squeeze of worry while he runs the last few metres there._

_One of the practice hammers in a flailing boyish hand is visible from around the curved doorframe, and Thor's fierce grin under his mop of blond hair softens a touch when he catches sight of Loki watching from the entrance. In its halted mid-swing, the practice hammer mistakably clips the wooden chair Loki sits on, toppling it over._

_"Good morning, Loki! You're just in time – I just began some solo battle training!"_

_Loki quickly stoops down to pick up his fallen chair, looking up at his big brother with large eyes, his thin hands on the thin chair arms. "Perhaps you should leave your training to the training fields, so you leave some part of this place undamaged, Brother." He says it with a small, lighthearted smile, though discontent unexpectedly touches its corners._

_Just entering teenager years, Thor's gold hair had been allowed to grow longer than usual. He pushes it out of his forehead and nods reluctantly at the chair. "Very well, but you perform some of your small magic tricks here sometimes, Brother!"_

_A small, colourful flame springs to life in Loki's cupped hands and lights a new smile, cheeky this time. "But this isn't destructive fire, is it?"_

* * *

The scuffmarks on floor were now faint, but reminiscences they carried were vibrant as any in Loki's memory – the fighting between them, the wars between realms, the falling through darkness and other bottomless holes that always made him feel so lost… And those pale scrapes on the floor of a place only they used to know, they were the brightest.

So he held onto them.

* * *

_The mild draught the morning sent to stir around Loki in their sanctuary seems patient and contented. The contentment is reflected in the green orbs of the person waiting for his older brother to appear, meanwhile causing the puddles of daylight on the floor to dance around._

_But the babble of a boisterous, small crowd approaches and breaks through the bubble of peace in the parapet hollow._

_Before he even looks up at the people who enter, Loki feels the precious secrecy of their hideaway, his sanctuary, slipping away._

_"Brother! I have good news!"_

_Thor ushers into the room three other boys and a girl with long hair, who are laughing and playfully shoving each other, before he grins hugely at him. "Father has declared our friends and I are skillful enough with our weapons in our early adolescence to go on a brief journey!"_

_As Thor announces this, he takes his seat in his chair, and Sif sits beside him in Loki's. Thor's grin is expectant, and Loki wishes his returning smile and demeanor were not so aloofly polite in order to cover any crestfallen unhappiness._

_A mere five minutes later, Thor's eyebrows are already raised in surprise at Loki's remoteness, and Sif mutters under her breath, "Maybe if he learnt to fight properly, their father would not be forced to confine him to the palace for his own protection." Hogun nods to her, Loki hearing everything._

_He raises his own eyebrow. "Are you sure it's that, and not the Allfather just trying to get the most destructive people out of the palace?"_

_"Loki, don't be so unmannerly to our friends." Thor chides him good-naturedly, Fandral snorts, and Loki makes sure only Thor can see the beseeching, indignant look he gives back. But he doesn't._

_The other five file out of the little chamber, and even their assumption of Loki's bitterness dissipates as he sighs quietly to himself, carefully straightening the two chairs so they are back closely side-by-side._

* * *

Loki could almost actually hear his brother's voice, and see the two of them in their early years of adolescence. With that intolerable distance he hated so, so much between them in those moments, with only one of them believing it was really there.

* * *

_A young man, not quite yet in full adulthood, steps silently into the rooftop hollow. His ink-coloured hair hides a pair of green eyes still retaining some faint, childish innocence._

_He feels like he's waiting for someone, but when it's apparent no one is coming after some hours, the feeling fades._

_He continues to stay, though, but just because there is nowhere else he can go._

* * *

_A slender figure enters the parapet hideaway. He walks slowly around the tiny room, brushing away any thin layers of gathering dust – Thor had long since stopped coming, and though Loki still often saw him everywhere else, he wanted to make sure to always come back and housekeep their childhood hideout._

_The early dawn is now beginning to find some light, and the old signpost above the misshapen doorway is a little easier to see._

* * *

Suddenly feeling the weight of loneliness being brought down on him again, Loki made to sit in the same place he used to. He crouched beside the left wooden chair – it seemed even tinier now, had he really not been able to reach the ground with his feet back then? – and carefully swept his pale hand over the seat to clear away the dust that had gathered when he had been absent from Asgard.

A familiar mixture of the desolate, aching longing and nostalgia seemed to wrench him inside out as Loki stared unhappily around the tiny scope of his old world. The place seemed so much smaller and sweeter, meant for their children selves, yet he seemed to fit in there completely, still. Despite his knives, his black coat tails, his boots, all worn from running and fighting.

He noticed that Thor's chair beside him was considerably much dustier, and wondered discontentedly how long exactly it had been since his brother had sat there. Loki wished that at least their two places had gathered dust at the same rate. It would mean that one of them had not been coming there alone.

His gaze trailed slowly over the mild shadows of the room, and finally found what he had been earlier searching for. It must have just fallen from its place above the entrance, but it was still there. The paper of the childish sign looked faded and old, and felt so fragile that it could have been torn by the breeze that drifted around the two wooden chairs, with the evening light.

The words he had written when they were children were almost gone, his writing having been so much lighter than Thor's, while his brother's was still there, in those solid, bold lines. The last 's' in _SONS _was even faded away completely, but the naïve childhood happiness of the little note clung to it with a determined, unshakable strength that Loki supplied.

As he touched his fingertips to the scribbled, inky letters on the paper, the gathering, distraught nostalgia continued growing into a ripping, raging storm, full of different muffled emotions. But somehow none of them felt all that bitter, even as it continued battering him from the inside. Loki drew in a deep breath, letting it out silently, his eyes closed, and a new feeling came – just a great, overwhelming flood of pure longing.

Longing to just go back – back in time, back to the place only they knew, in their shared untouched happiness, when they used to always arrive at the same time. Back with Thor.

_Just keep waiting for him…_

* * *

Loki didn't want to leave the place, but he couldn't stay there forever. As much as he might want to.

Like it was the most precious thing in all the worlds, he stowed the delicate rectangle of paper into his pocket before turning to leave.

But a large, familiar figure stood, frozen and stooped, in the arched entrance of the room.

"…Brother?"

* * *

**_Author's Note: I hope you liked the story, and thanks so much to everyone who read, reviewed, favourited, followed, anything *.* _**


End file.
